Zambonini reveals naked truth about Cognos

July 30, 2003 - The outspoken CEO of software giant, Cognos, has pulled off another of his outlandish trademark stunts. Scottish-born Ron Zambonini recently stunned Wall Street by promising to strip off for Cognos’ third quarter conference call later on this year if its latest analytics product, ReportNet, does not pull in $10 million in sales for the quarter.

The charismatic CEO is ‘unconcerned’ about the threat posed by arch-rival Business Objects following its recent acquisition of Crystal Decisions. Cognos delivers software that helps companies improve business performance by enabling effective decision-making at all levels of the organisation.

According to Zambonini, the two companies’ products and customers have more in common than they would openly admit. In a recent interview with Forbes magazine he said of the merger, paraphrasing a well-known Chinese proverb:

"A man with an old car who buys another old car ends up spending a lot of time in the garage."

Zambonini is adamant that Business Objects’ leadership will be short-lived - likening it to a race He went further to predict that Cognos will hit the $1 billion in sales within three years - something only 14 publicly held software companies have achieved to date. With first quarter sales of $150 million, exceeding estimates, he is well in the way to achieving this goal.

Since its introduction to NASDAQ, Cognos has grown its total revenue by more than 1,000 percent, from $49.7 million (all dollars in US funds) in the company’s fiscal year 1987 to $551.0 million in fiscal year 2003.

Zambonini’s previous antics include starring as Braveheart in a corporate video and impersonating his Star Trek hero, Scotty, at a company-wide conference.

For further information

About Cognos, an IBM Company
Cognos, an IBM company, is the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions.

It provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance.
Cognos was acquired by IBM in January 2008.

For more information, visit http://www.ibm.com/software/data/ and http://www.cognos.com/uk/

For further information about Cognos, please contact:
Katy Lyons or Farimah Saadat at LEWIS, the PR agency

Telephone: +44 (0)20 7802 2626
Fax: +44 (0)20 7802 2627
www.lewispr.com

For sales enquiries call:
Tel: +44 (0) 1344 486 668
www.cognos.com/uk